Subject: REVIEW: HOOK

From: [email-masked] (John Wagner)
Date: 22 Jan 92 19:22:47 GMT

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				    HOOK
			A film by Steven Spielberg
		       A film review by John Wagner
			Copyright 1992 John Wagner

     (Two Hollywood scriptwriters meet in a restaurant.  Number One
works for Steven Spielberg's organization; Number Two for another major
studio.  Number One sits down at Number Two's table, brandishing a
heavily-pencilled typewritten manuscript of a film script.)

ONE: Hey there, dude!  Que pasa?  Listen, is the Spielberg
     organization hot, or is it hot?

TWO: Looks like you've been busy.  Do I see a screenplay there
     before me?

ONE: Yeah, we just had a major script conference, with the Marketing
     and Customer Profile people there and *everything*.
     Mr. Spielberg even showed up.

TWO: Wow, it *must* have been important.  What's the project?  Can
     you talk about it?

ONE: Talk about it?  Hell, man, we want this leaked to every major
     paper in the country.  This is *the* number-one idea of the
     Nineties!  It's a heartwarming film that'll make the whole
     family laugh, cry, and feel good about themselves!

TWO: SON OF E.T?

ONE: Even better, man!  Here, have a look at the script yourself;
     I'll give you a rundown.  (Hands the thick manuscript across
     the table).

TWO: So it's called HOOK, eh?

ONE: Yeah.  Great title, huh?  Now get this for an idea:  Peter
     Pan -- you know, the kid from that Brit fairy tale?

TWO: Sure, Sir James Barrie.

ONE: No, Pan, Peter Pan.  P-A-N.  Anyway, get this:  He leaves
     Neverneverland, grows up, and becomes an American corporation
     lawyer!

TWO: (Aghast)  What?  You're shitting me!  This is some kind of
     parody, right?  Like AIRPLANE?

ONE: Get with the program, man!  This is a major creative
     breakthrough!  See, he's married now -- to Wendy's granddaughter
     -- and he's got a couple of adorable, precocious kids just like
     the ones in E. T., and he's a borderline alcoholic...

TWO: *What!?*

ONE: ...yeah, and so totally dedicated to his job that he's, like,
     losing touch with his family.

TWO: (Leafing through the manuscript) From the way these kids are
     written, I don't blame him.  'Precocious' is hardly the word
     for it.  Don't you guys over there at Amblin ever get to meet
     any *real* children?  Kids don't act or talk like this.  Not
     without a team of writers handy, anyway.

ONE: Aw, don't be so literal-minded, man!  We're just bringing out
     the true heart and soul of the child in all of us.

TWO: (Suspiciously) Where did you get *that* line?

ONE: It's on the sign over Mr. Spielberg's office.  Anyway,
     Peter's wife goes with him on a business trip to London...

TWO: Yeah, and what >about< his wife?  Just riffling through the
     script, I don't see too much evidence of affection here.  They
     both talk a lot about how much they love their kids, which is
     nice, but they don't show too much interest in each other.

ONE: Look, they're *married*, for Christ's sake!  What do you think
     this is, a *romance* or something?

TWO: Well, you might at least have made her a more interesting
     person.  She doesn't seem to be much more than someone for
     the kids to call "mommy."  From what I see here, you've made
     her a cross between Betty Crocker and a botched Anne Murray
     clone.

ONE: Motherhood is what brings a tear to the eye of every right-
     thinking American family, you goddam coldhearted cynic.  Our
     Market Research group says statistical surveys bear it out.
     Anyway, there'll be a big John Williams crescendo behind it
     every time the little tykes coo "mommy," and that's all the
     characterization she needs.

TWO: Okay, okay.  Hmmm... I see that Peter has somehow managed to
     forget who he is, and that he used to live in Neverland.  But
     nobody else from Neverland seems to have that problem when
     they visit our world.  How come?

ONE: Just because, that's all.  Look, it's a fantasy; you've got to
     have suspension of disbelief.  Don't you have *any* imagination?

TWO: Let it pass.  Let's see...  Tinkerbell takes Peter back to
     Neverland, and the Lost Boys...  Hey!  The way you describe
     the Lost Boys in here, they sound like a bunch of American
     kids from some urban street gang.  Even spiky haircuts and
     skateboards! What the hell?

ONE: (Disdainful) Well, *sure*.  I mean, this is the nineties,
     man!  You don't expect audiences to identify with a bunch of
     turn-of-the-century Limey urchins, do you?  We've got to have
     broad-based audience appeal.  You'll notice that the Boys are
     an ethnically-diverse group, too: A prominent percentage of
     blacks, Asians, and Hispanics.  Their leader is even a street-
     smart ethnic kid called Rubio.

TWO: But the Lost Boys, in the original story, were from *England*,
     not Los Angeles!  You're trying to Americanize -- hell,
     *Californianize* -- the whole setting.  Jesus, here you've got
     Captain Hook's pirates playing *Baseball*!  (With sudden
     suspicion)  Hey, do the Lost Boys at least have British accents?

ONE: Don't be such a stickler for petty details; American audiences
     don't care about this stuff.  Now, look here, how the Lost Boys
     get Peter back into shape after Hook kidnaps Peter's kids...

TWO: Why did Hook kidnap them?  How did he know Peter would be in
     London, especially seeing how Peter doesn't even know his own
     identity?  And how did he get to our world and back?

ONE: Aw, man, there you go again!  No imagination!  I'm telling you,
     *suspension of disbelief*!  Get in touch with your inner child,
     and stop whining about every little unimportant thing.  Just
     let the wonder and magic of the story carry you along.  The
     important thing is that Pete saves his little ones, brings
     them back home to Mommy, and never returns to Neverland again.

TWO: (Amazed) He comes *back* to this world?  What for?  Neverland
     is a magic world full of delight and wonder and adventure,
     where no one ever gets old and dies.  Why would he come *back*
     once he knew the way?  If he's so crazy about Mom and the kids,
     why not bring *them* over?

ONE: Oh, nonononono!  Movie characters *never* choose immortality and
     magic over their everyday lives.  They've always got to decide
     that the life they've got right here at home is the best of all
     possible worlds.  If we were to imply otherwise, audiences might
     be dissatisfied with their own lives, and a dissatisfied audience
     is an unhappy audience that doesn't go out and tell their friends
     to see the film.  Immortality is a taboo subject anyway.  You
     can't have it in real life, so you've got to make it look
     undesirable on film.

TWO: Well, okay, but it still sounds to me as if you're just trying
     to glorify the American upper-middle-class yuppie lifestyle.

ONE: *Now* you're seeing the light, dude!  All those aging Baby
     Boomers with adorable little kiddies of their own are just
     going to *flock* to this one!  Market Research says it'll even
     out-pull E.T.!

TWO: (Flipping through more pages, skimming the dialogue) Now
     *here's* something intriguing, that really rings true:  This
     part where Tinkerbell reveals that she's in love with Peter.
     And she's a good, strong character, with depth and a certain
     complexity.  (Proceeds a few pages more)  Oh, hell -- you have
     Peter refuse her love because he wants to remain true to Mommy;
     I mean, his wife.  That might be believable if you'd made the
     wife a real person, with some sort of dimension, but as she's
     written, she's about as interesting as a slice of white bread.
     You're trying to say that Peter would find this insipid wimp
     so fascinating that he doesn't even *consider* an intelligent,
     unique woman like Tinkerbell?  Come on!

ONE: Listen, you degenerate, you're talking about *adultery*, maybe
     even *bigamy*!  This is a *family* film, and the sanctity of
     the American Family Unit is the product -- I mean *premise* --
     of this picture.  Peter's wife is a Devoted Mother, and he
     wouldn't even *think* of betraying her!  The juvenile lures of
     Neverland have no attraction for Peter.  He only wants to get
     back to the rewarding warmth of his family.  His sense of
     *responsibility* carries him away from such childish temptations.

TWO: Oh, really?  But it looks to me like an overdeveloped sense of
     responsibility is what turned him into such a boozy, burned-out
     workaholic to begin with.  It doesn't make sense to try and
     claim that his experiences in Neverland teach him something
     about the value of responsible behavior.

ONE: (Loftily) The Work Ethic; Willing shouldering of one's obligations;
     the sacrifice of one's personal needs for the greater good of the
     moral community.  These are the foundations of our Kinder, Gentler,
     private-sector, Family-Channel America.  What are you, some kind of
     *hippie* or something?  Amblin Entertainment does not endorse
     self-centered hedonism.  We have a responsibility to reinforce the
     moral outlook of all those ticket-buying, upscale, socially-
     conservative, middle-American baby boomers out there.

TWO: (Sighs wearily) It's only a film; stop trying to make it sound
     like the Sermon on the Mount.

ONE: Don't be irreverent.  Mr. Spielberg has enormous respect for
     mainstream American middle-class values and their preju... er,
     ethical structures.

TWO: Look, I don't care what a picture's moral outlook is; all that
     matters is that it have a coherent, convincing, logical story,
     and that it be internally consistent enough to make me accept it
     on its own terms.  This script doesn't do the job on *any* of
     those requirements.

ONE: Ah, that's because you're just looking at *words*, dude!  We
     are no longer living in your archaic, word-oriented society --
     today's world is *visually* oriented.  Rock videos; visceral
     commercials.  The image is the message.  The *story* isn't
     what's important, it's the totality of the *product*, er, that
     is, the film itself.  First of all (ticks items off on his
     fingers), we've got Industrial Light & Magic doing the megabuck
     special effects.  Old Walt Disney must be spinning in his
     cryogenic vault wishing *he'd* had computer graphics like ours!
     Then there's the John Williams score, which captures all the
     rich magic of his music for STAR WARS and E.T....

TWO: I kind of figured that it would.

ONE: ...right.  But I've saved the best for last:  Get this, dude,
     we have signed *Robin Williams* and *Dustin Hoffman* to play
     Peter and Captain Hook!

TWO: (Thoughtful) Mmmm.  Good choices, no doubt about that.

ONE: 'Good?'  Hell, it's *great*!  We were ready to fall back on
     Michael Keaton if Williams wouldn't make a deal, but everything
     worked out just fine, contract-wise.  I've seen some of the
     early rushes of Hoffman playing Hook, and it's *incredible*!
     I mean, we are looking at possible Oscar material here, baby!

TWO: Well, I can easily believe that; he's quite an amazingly
     versatile guy.  But the presence of one, even two, great
     actors isn't enough to make a film good by itself.  Nor can
     it cover up a ridiculous premise or a silly, illogical, treacly
     script full of saccharine, empty sentimentality in place of
     genuine feeling.  And pyrotechnic technical effects won't cover
     up lack of a story either, even with a John Williams score to
     dramatize them.

ONE: Story, hell!  This film is an *experience*!  Audiences will
     laugh, they'll cry, they'll leave the theater hugging each
     other with ecstatic warmth; it's a heartwarming experience
     that the whole family will love and cherish throughout their
     lives; it's an affirmation of goodness and a triumph of the
     human spirit.

TWO: It's a dumb, shallow story.  And a very expensive dumb, shallow
     movie.

ONE: (Furious) Oh yeah?  Well listen, mister literature-professor-
     type, you think maybe you could do better?

TWO: (Stares vacantly into the salad bar, thinking quickly)  Well,
     there must be a hundred ways that the basic premise could be
     handled in a more believable, adult way.  How about...  Let's
     say, just for the sake of argument, that we keep your idea about
     Peter somehow leaving Neverland and forgetting who he is.  Now
     he's grown up, unhappy in his corporate existence, but divorced,
     alienated from his own children.  His wife has remarried, and
     the kids seem perfectly happy with their stepfather, much to
     his bleak dismay.

     Now Tinkerbell comes along, looking for Peter.  There's some
     kind of crisis in Neverneverland; Captain Hook looks to be
     setting up a pirate dictatorship or something.  She drags him
     back against his will, just like in your version, and gets the
     Lost Boys to bring him up to speed and restore his lost memory.
     (Glares at ONE) And the Lost Boys will be British orphans, just
     like they're supposed to be!

     There are all kinds of wild adventures, with as many neat
     special effects as you can afford, an eventual confrontation
     with Hook, in which he is defeated but not killed, in case you
     want to do a sequel.  In the course of all this, Peter has gone
     from a confused, despised tackling dummy of the Lost Boys to a
     caring father-figure to whom they all look for guidance and
     support -- things that the old, less-experienced Peter couldn't
     give them: also not too far from your version.  But then
     -- how's this? -- he realizes how his obsessions with material
     success were poisoning his relationship with his own children,
     and, in fact, that it was his buried memories of Neverland that
     were making him so unhappy in our everyday world, and leading
     him to the bottle.  Now that he's back where he belongs, so to
     speak, he decides to become a real father to the Lost Boys,
     having learned his lessons.  The love interest with Tinkerbell
     can be allowed to develop, instead of just being raised and
     then clumsily dropped.  There:  The End.  Peter Pan remains a
     legendary, otherworldly figure; everybody lives happily ever
     after, and not a dry eye in the house.  But we've done it with
     real, three-dimensional adult characters, believable, realistic
     child characters, and a coherent, logically-unfolding storyline
     with some depth and character development.

     Of course, that's just one possible alternative approach.  If
     you want to insist on keeping Peter's wife and kids in the
     picture, we could try it this way...

ONE: (Outraged) Are you *crazy*?

TWO: No, listen, when you start thinking about it, there are a lot of
     interesting possible ways of handling this set of characters and
     situations.  We could maybe go at it from this angle...

ONE: (Frantic) No! Enough!  You call that a *script*?  Where's the
     reaffirmation of Traditional American Family Values?  Where's
     the comforting reassurance that There's No Place Like Home?
     Where's the goddam *moral*?

TWO: What makes you think a story has to have a moral?  Or if it does,
     that the moral has to be trite and simplistic?  I was describing
     a story with *Human* values, not slanted from any special set of
     presuppositions.  Sometimes, you know, 'home' can be a pretty
     unhappy place, one from which it's best to move on, if you've
     got the courage.  It would take skill, talent, and a real feeling
     for genuine emotions to write a script like *that*.  You couldn't
     gloss over the hard parts with a lot of slick, pseudo-sentimental
     cellophane, or swelling violin choruses.

ONE: (Disgusted) You see?  You see?  It's just your kind of cynical,
     jaded negativism that our organization is battling so hard to
     root out of America.  You don't know anything about *real*
     emotion, the kind the Real People out there in the Heartland
     feel!  Well, let me tell you, Mr. Scrooge, our Marketing
     Research department says that *your* kind only amount to 2.31
     percent of the American movie audience!  You can just go right
     back to your books and your creative writing classes while the
     rest of us Real People continue to tug at the bittersweet
     heartstrings of the American Dream!  (Grabs script back, shoves
     it into attache case, and stands angrily)  And furthermore, you
     *pseudo*-intellectual snob, *my* studio's five-year profit curve
     is *twice* the five-year profit curve of *your* studio!
     Good-*bye*! (Storms out of the restaurant)

(TWO sits at the table alone, munching on his sandwich and brushing
spots of ONE's Cream Of Lobster soup off of his shirt sleeves.  A
waiter ambles along and begins clearing away ONE's dishes.)

WAITER: That fella sure was upset.  Jesus, what a mess!  Something
        wrong with his stomach?

TWO: Too much sugar, I think.

WAITER: He works for one of those movie studios.  Writer, I think.
        I guess that kind of job'll give you stomach problems.  What
        was it he was talking to you about, if you don't mind me
        asking?

TWO: Oh, I guess he really wanted me to sort of personally review
     a new movie he's working on.

WAITER: Oh, yeah?  And what's your review?

TWO: (Thinking for a moment)  P-A-N, buddy.  Pan.

                                            John Wagner
                                    Pennsylvania State University